Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Archeage: charcoal disaster

Archeage has a "trading" system, similar to Black Desert (Archeage was first). In this, you create a special item, a "trade pack", that you can carry on your back slowing you down or put into special (and $-expensive) transport wagons and move to NPCs at distant lands. The further you carry them, the higher reward you get. Or, that's the plan. But it's completely messed up and I doubt if many people actually make more money on this than they'd get by simply grinding mobs. Probably this is why I barely see NPCs below 130% reward, which means that no one used that NPC for some time.

There are two kinds of NPCs to turn packs in. One is for intra-continental trade. The continents are mostly in the hands of one faction, so you can do such trade mostly safe. Traders can be attacked by pirate players who take the pack upon kill and turn them in themselves. Here you can see the prices of Haranya and Nuia continents.

The first problem is that the material cost of the packs are often higher than what the NPC pays after a medium-ranged haul. For example the Hasla pack materials cost nearly 20G, so you can make 1G "profit" if you bring it to the other end of the continent. Don't forget to add the value of the 50 labor points you use making the trade pack. If you'd use that labor for crafting instead, you could easily get 1-2G instead. And that's before the time cost.

But the really nasty thing is the intercontinental trade. If you do that, you get "Charcoal stabilizer" item. "Due to the risk involved to get these high-demand materials, they sell for high prices and are considered to be one of the most profitable trade ventures." - says the official site. Too bad that in reality 1 Charcoal sells for 80 silver so you usually get less money for a lengthy boat run than you'd get for a land trade. The low price is probably because PvP is nearly dead (I wasn't killed once with a trade pack) and because it's trivial to bot sea travel. While the devs included a delay between turning in the pack and being paid to give themselves time to catch botters, they seem to be doing a bad job.

Also, the server you are on makes a BIG difference. On our server in NA, we had guildies make alts on the EU server to make money, buy apex, and then 'spend' the apex on the NA server because on our server, PVP was certainly NOT DEAD. I would be greatly interested in hearing your opinions of archeage on a busy NA server. Once your character gets to level cap, the experience would be like playing a completely different game because of the server you are on and how it impacts your ability to make money.